


Mother's Milk

by Ineffabilitea



Category: Classical Greece and Rome History & Literature RPF
Genre: M/M, Sibling Incest, Snippets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-21
Updated: 2006-04-21
Packaged: 2017-10-09 02:28:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/81980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ineffabilitea/pseuds/Ineffabilitea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My brother and I weren't like other twins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mother's Milk

I sometimes wonder if it was the she-wolf's milk that made us this way. My brother and I weren't like other twins. Many nights Acca would tell Remus and me tales of the divine twins, sons of Zeus, Castor and Pollux, who did everything together and loved each other so much that Castor sacrificed half his immortality for Pollux, and I would lie there thinking that I would never do that for Remus, nor would he for me, and even if I did make the offer, that he would reject it, wishing to be the sacrificer, not the one sacrificed for. We were fiercely competitive in everything we did, always seeking to establish dominance over the other. Not that we didn't love each other; but we hated and loved in equal measure.

My first memory is of fighting with him. We were very small, and Acca had made honeycakes. She and Faustulus never had very much, and they were a rare treat. We usually made do with some spelt and goat's milk, the vegetables from Acca's small garden, and had meat only at festivals, when there had been a sacrifice. A neighbor with a beehive must have given us the honey. Somehow, the cakes Acca left for us turned out to have an odd number- unluckily. Later she learnt never to give us anything that couldn't be divided in two. When there was one cake left in front of the hearth, our hands reached out simultaneously to snatch it, and met. I don't remember that we said a word; there were no childish shouts of 'Mine!' 'No, mine!' He met my eyes in challenge, his gaze far fiercer than a four-year-old boy's had any right to be. I suppose my look was the same. And then he growled, I growled, no we growled, and then pounced, kicking, biting, scratching in a fight too vicious for the toddlers we were.

Perhaps the fault lay, not in the milk of our mother wolf, but in our father; if the twin sons of Zeus willingly sacrificed for each other, it is no wonder that we, sons of Mars as we were, fought relentlessly.

When we were fourteen I think Acca despaired of us, certain we would kill each other before we reached manhood. As for Faustulus, I think only his secret conviction that we were divine twins, royal and destined for greater things than herding goats, kept him from the same despair. We fought constantly then, always with our bodies, never with words. These fights were never playful, brotherly brawls after which all was forgiven and forgotten. Despite the small slights and quarrels which set them off, they were always in deadly earnest. There was a tension between us, growing. I think that even then we knew how it would end- how it would all end.

We were out with the goats the first time it happened. It started out as another fight, of course. A nanny-goat was beginning to stray and I told Remus to send the dog after it. He never took it well when I ordered him about, just as I always resented it when he told me what to do. He leapt upon me and had me on the ground before I could blink, and we were wrestling- but the word implies a sophistication our tussling didn't have, an acknowledgement of the rules of the sport as laid down by the civilized Greeks. When my brother and I wrestled, it was always a primal struggle for dominance, another legacy of the wolf.

He growled; I snarled, rolling over and over on the ground with him, our responsibility for the goats forgotten. He bit me then, at the base of my neck, and as I felt his teeth sink into my skin, another sensation came over me; it seemed to rise from the pit of my stomach. Arousal. At the moment, my twin had me pinned on my back, was biting my neck- things that had happened many times before in our fights- and suddenly, I was as hard as iron. Before I could even begin to understand what was happening, Remus withdrew his mouth from my neck and growled again. I looked up at him, looked into his eyes, and realized: he felt it too. And he did; I could now feel, I realized, the evidence of that pressed hard against my thigh.

It was only a moment that we spent with our eyes locked on each other's, though it felt like an eternity. The moment passed and the fight continued. Oh, it was still a fight, but something had clearly changed. My every move- every roll and tumble and wriggle- was calculated to allow me an opportunity to thrust up against my brother, and it was clear his strategy was the same. The arousal had not replaced my anger or the irrational need for dominance; if anything, it enhanced them, just as they increased my sudden need. I don't remember which of us won the fight. I just remember lying there, panting, when it had come to its inevitable conclusion for both of us. I gazed up into the cloudless blue sky and wondered what had just happened. The sudden sound of Remus' laughter startled me. Remus was _laughing_, laughing with joy as though what we had done was marvelous and not in the least shameful. As I joined in the laughter, I stopped wondering what had happened, and started wondering when it would happen again.


End file.
